Forte Kosakku
by fortekosakku
Summary: This is a story about Forte. After all the events of the cyberbeasts are over, Forte finds himself with new questions... Forte Kosakku on soundcloud for original rockman music to go with the chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Year 20XX . Location - The Undernet. Server 34. Area - Under The Table.

Forte stretches out his legs and then crosses his arms. He sits in a booth alone in a bar in the Undernet. Its a popular location, which is to say , Forte is never here. Its always full of navis trying to find drugs for their users or trying to order some kind of attack , either viral or physical, against another human for some petty reason. He wishes he didnt have to suffer this today or any other day but there is a rumor he heard about a powerful new Navi with the ability to put other navis to sleep. Something that has never been done. Navi programs cannot go into sleep mode. They are either running as programs or not running and the code stops flowing. If it did not stop flowing, programs could not be debugged or fixed from fragmentation errors. He even heard that his Navi was driving other navis insane through nightmares as they slept. This was important for Forte because he just recently started to randomly fall asleep and dream and he had no clue as to how or why. He only suspected it had something to do with trying to copy Rockmans ultimate program and failing. He hasnt quite felt like his full normal self since. He has this anxiety in him that wasnt there before. His dreams lately were stressing Forte with images of his betrayal by the humans before in Sci lab. The fear he felt for his life for the first time in particular keeps recirculating over and over in his dreams. He wakes up often in a panic, alone, with no one to witness what he would think of as an embarrassing display of weakness. Someone at this bar may know something, its what everyone is chatting about anyway when Forte is monitoring transmissions. THey say the Navi appears at random at Under The Table and asks to buy some blastit. Blastit is the newest cyber drug. Its a drug meant to mimic Ecstasy for net navis. Many navis for the more perverted users are designed to stimulate their operators in various ways, one of the more trending ways is getting your navi high on EX while , touch screening her/him to climax. Some users have even married their Navis and countrys like Germany will allow a legal marriage to a Navi as long as the Navi is of a version of 44 or higher. You may have learned in school that net navi number 1 is none other than Siri.

A waitress navi in a glittering sparkling dark purple sequin dress walks up to Forte. Her face is pretty with curvy cheeks and a small nose with a little bit of red on the tip. Her eyes are golden colored and her skin tone is a pale white. She has hair like a brier patch. Dark green vines with black thorns with red tips twist and curl around in the pattern of human hair that looks very much tangled.

Navi - Hi there. My name is Cyster. What will you have?

Forte - ...

Forte , with his eyes closed, and his arms crossed, ignores the waitress.

Cyster EXE - ooook ill just give you a little more time then...

Forte waits till the waitress turns to leave and he opens just one eye to get a look at her. The dress catches his eye and the thorns and vines flowing down her back is a nice touch. He closes his eye and returns to his silence.

One of those normal generic green navis comes bursting through the entrance. He starts to scream out loud...

Navi - Everyone PLUG OUT! PLUG OUT! Its a horde of viruses!

The Navi starts to fade into pixels and plugs out.

The waitress wastes no time in following suite.

A mettar walks in through the bar pushes the door a few inches with its head, then takes a step forward and pushes an inch or two more, then takes another step and pushes on through inside. He then uses his shockwave to attack the bartender. The shockwave smashes into the bar and cracks through the cyber wood and splits the bar like a log in two. The shockwave crashes into the bar navi and he slams into the wall behind, crashing down bottles. The cyber glass flys all the way over to fortes table and a few pieces land on it right in front of his face. Forte opens up one eye again to look at the glass on his table. Again he shuts his eye and ignores whats going on...

The bartender holds his chest for a few moments and then deletes...  
Three other Navis are here in this bar enjoying some cyber drinks. One in a booth two booths down from Forte. One at the far far end of the bar thats now a bit crooked from the last attack. And one playing an arcade unit on the other side of the bar next to the cyber rooms.

Cyber rooms are not restrooms but cyber sex rooms. Something not allowed on public servers. Inside these rooms programs can unzip parts of their code and shove them into the spaces unzipped by their partners, resembling sex but the process looks strange to the human eye. The navis will phase in and out of pixelation and it makes it hard to distinguish who is who. Usually after it is over, some part of the partners code remains in them forever unless forcefully removed. The reason this is illegal is because what parts remain and where they are stored in a navis code after sex is random. Cyber sex diseases are bugs that occur in programs who have corrupted too much of their code with these random insertions. Cydeath is the worst one. Cyglitch is the most common. Twitches or vocal glitches are the usual first symptoms. Its also impossible to erase the traces of a program being unzipped illegally. Navis that do this or participate in illegal cyber sex are often isolated to the Undernet. No reputable buisness would hire them and no normal operator would use them. If an operator gets tired of them or wants a different girl navi or boy navi to play with , these navis who are often very attached to their operators get cast away.

This navi playing at the arcade is one such throw away. She gets her attention grabbed by the mettars attack. She stands 6 feet 3 inches tall in the cyber world. She has black stiletto style boots. Black leather leggings and straight jacket for a top. All black, all leather. The jacket has her arms unshackled but her hands dont come out of the sleeves. They are long and have metal zippers and clasps at teh end of the sleeves. She walks up behind the mettar and picks it up. Its little feet try to walk on nothing but air, scrambling to get away from its metta...it crys. Its pickaxe is wildly going up and down but without any surface to hit , it wont create a shockwave.

Mysterious Female Navi - Hey there cuuuutie!

The navi tosses the mettar up and down like a child, toying with it.

Mysterious Female Navi - You cant do nothing like this can you? HE HE he. What are you doing here huh? Let me give you a kiss...

She gives the mettar a kiss on his cheek and he starts to glitch, the mettar makes a noise that sounds like pain and then the mettar starts to pixelate into deletion.

The navi turns around and walks off in a cute fashion skipping back to her arcade unit. She ignores all the damage and the fact that the bartender just got deleted and resumes her game.

Forte feels that its pointless to remain here since the bartender has died and most all the customers have left. The other two navis besides the woman left after finishing their drinks and leaving some zennys on their tables for a bartender that doesnt exist. Forte thinks to himself that the citizens of the Undernet show more honor than some of the humans hes met in his life so far...

He opens his eyes and to his surprise...a black with white pawed kitten is staring right at him on top of his table.

Meeeoow...the kitten squeaks. Its probably the cutest sound a kitten has ever made.

Forte makes a concerned face.

Forte - whatever you want...NO.

The cyber cat hears Fortes voice and jumps up to his head and circles around and around and then nestles down on top. The cyber cats paws hang down on each side of his cross shaped head gem.

Forte stands up...his face looks blank. He reaches up to pick up the cat but she senses it and jumps back down to the table. She turns up and meows again.

Fortes hard exterior couldnt take much more, the cat is innocent, cute, and affectionate. Forte is hard but hes not souless. He reaches down to pet her head.

Forte - Okay...

He continues to pet her and she starts to purr..then Forte...feels something familiar. She seems familiar with him and he cant put his finger on it, but he could swear hes seen this cat before. His memory access is perfect and the fact he cant recall exactly where and when hes seen this cat bothers him.

Forte - come on...lets get out of here.

Forte picks up the cat and carry's her under his arm like a piece of baggage. Her paws and legs dangle down limp and her head and ears are perked up and looking forward. After they exit the bar he teleports to a quiet park bench in a shady cyber city recreational area. He places the cat down on the bench and ponders his next move. That dream navi is still probably in the undernet. This cat though, proves a bigger mystery to me than that...

Forte looks down at the cat again and she looks up and meets his gaze.

MEoww...she says. Forte reaches down to pet her. He pets her and again he gets a sensation of nostalgia or deja vu.

Forte - Thats about enough of that...

Forte activates his copy ability program to scan the cat...

Forte...loses consciousness...


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The black with white pawed kitten licks Fortes cheek.

Forte is laying sideways on the park bench. Its no longer shaded though. The cyber sun has moved in the sky a good ways and now the shade is under a small grove of cyber trees about ten feet from the bench Forte sleeps on. Hes been in the direct cyber sun for 2 of the last 4 hours hes been unconscious here. The kitten has been sleeping curled up under Fortes midsection right up to the point he showed signs of movement. She moved up to lick his cheek again.

Forte - Ughh...

Forte feels a bit sluggish. Its like his limbs and head all feel a bit new and hard to move. He stretches his limbs out again as he sits up. In a fashion much like he did at the bar he stretches his legs out again and folds his arms cross fashion with his eyes closed. Now he feels like his body will run full speed. Hes never felt sluggish before like that after waking up. What was he doing again? I was petting Haru.

Forte looks down at the kitten and she makes eye contact.

Forte - Haru?

Haru - Meooow?

Forte understood her. It wasnt through words or translation. He heard clearly with his ears meow. What he understood was she was answering yes.

Forte - H..hello.

Forte is a little bit shy all of a sudden. The kitten cannot talk and hes not hearing anything in his head but meows. Yet he feels a presence inside Haru. He looks at her again. She makes eye contact and blinks both eyes in a lazy way to show her acceptance and affection towards him. Forte wants to ask direct questions to Haru, half expecting to understand her meows as words.

Forte - Haru. Whats going on?

Haru just looks at him and repeats her lazy blinking and then starts to lick her paw.

Forte - Do you understand what im trying to ask ?

Forte doesnt use her name this time to see if she responds in any way.

Haru does not. She just looks up in a glance to see if hes still going on about something and then starts licking her paws again and rubbing them over the top of her head and ears.

Haru - meooww.

Forte - what?

He didnt understand that one. He wasnt looking at her but didnt get any impression from her this time other than a normal cat saying meow about something.

He looks down and Haru makes eye contact again.

Haru - meooww. (its not safe here)

Forte understood this time. Its the way the meow sounds that gives away their intent you just have to listen for the subtle differences and it really helped when he looked into her eyes. You can tell the sense of urgency better through both eye and ear input. He will remember that.

Forte knew it would be pointless to ask her why it was dangerous. It was probably some sound she could hear in the distance that Fortes hears couldnt. Or a smell. Cyber smells can be tracked even more by cat and dog programs than real ones. So he didnt question its validity. He just started to stand up and scan the area with his eyes to see where and what danger their may be nearby. Nothing...

Haru jumps up the shoulder of Forte and then climbs back up between the fins on his head and plops down hanging her paws to either side of his cross gem again. Forte can feel her clinging to his head. She almost feels magnetically attached to me. I can also feel the flow of her program inside her body. Its swirling around like a thousand whirlpools and then flowing linear up and down and horizontally. Its a pattern and flow like hes never seen or felt in any other program before. Especially not a normal neko program. Fortes senses suddenly jump up in potency.

He can hear all the way to the other side of this park! Thats a half mile! Whats more, not all the sounds have been amplified only ones that seem to have a pattern to them. Like the pattern of noise caused by explosions or breaking glass. Patterns similar to screams or crys from animals trigger a focus. In this case its the sound of a woman navi and her little daughter navi about waist high, screaming and the sound of explosions following it. Forte starts to dash at near full speed. Haru clings on.

Forte reaches the area. A purse and a melted cyber ice cone are in the middle of the paved walkway. Three rose bushes are lined up side by side along the path. The middle bush has a blast hole through it. The leaves on the outer rim of hole are still glowing orange with cinders still crackling softly and bits of ash falling down and then deleting when it hits the ground. Forte walks around the back end of the bush to see where else the blast went and finds the woman navi with a severe wound. A hole through where our lung would be, on the right side. The woman navi is clearly going to be deleted soon. Forte...picks her up and stands. He holds her head up closer to his ear to hear her last words better. Haru jumps down from Fortes head and lands on the womans head. She licks her forehead with her eyes closed. The woman starts to smile and then she fades...into deletion.

Haru hops down to the ground and looks up at Forte.

Haru - Meowww. (avenge her)

Forte - ...

Forte turns away to search for the navi or virus responsible when a giant seagull swoops down. It lands next to Haru and starts squawking and jabbering on with its wings spread out. It dances around in a humorous way and Haru jumps on its back and starts to claw and tear out feathers.

The seagull takes off in flight, turning its head around backwards to try to peck Haru off but she swipes his beak good and swats the birds head back around. The gull lets out a squawk and then continues to squawk in pain as Haru keeps tearing at the birds back.

Forte calls forth a virus. An eye-bot surfaces. He commands it to follow Haru and report back her location when she lands. Forte runs off in the direction of the bird...

The little girl is left holding her stuffed teddy, one of the teddys arms is dangling only by a few loose cyber threads. She stands in shock, alone, as Forte runs after Haru...he abandons the girl to an uncertain future...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Forte is running down a long hallway. The kind youd see in hospitals. Rooms to the left and right. At the end is a door with nothing visible inside because of a unnatural amount of bright light pouring out of it. Forte shields his eyes with his forearm and charges through.

He emerges outside. He realizes hes surrounded by moldy brick and dumpsters overflowing with garbage. Garbage bags litter the alleyway as they are lit up by random flickers of lightning. Its raining;heavy at that. The smell in the air is damp and thick with an odor he doesnt recognize. He hears a noise too hes only heard in old retro sims. Its the sound of carbon combustion engines. The sound of road noise and random accelerations of engines forces Forte to inspect them all at a high speed through his fast processing programs. He turns it all off. A bit overwhelming. Forte looks down to his hands, questioning his reality a moment. The rumbling sound of thunder in the distance guides Fortes head to the sky, the clouds are moving at a fast speed. The wind must be high but its not a breeze to be felt inside this alleyway. Forte stoops down to place his hand on the pavement. A technique he uses often in new sims. He intends to copy the basic code of the sims foundation. It often holds information as to where and who and what and why. This time, nothing. Not only that, he cant seem to access anything at all.

The sound of a small thud against the other side of one the dumpsters closest to Forte catches his attention. He walks around to see what appears to be an old man. A black trash bag covers his head and most of his body. Only two white protrusions of hair ,partially soaked but still somehow upright, jut out from the sides of the bag.

Forte - Seems hes asleep...whats this? A kitten? Inside the old mans hands is a small black with white pawed kitten. Shes barely a week old. And not moving. Forte looks down where the old man has propped his head against the dumpster. There is another black with white paw laying upside down, the rest of the cat has appeared to be crushed underneath the dumpster.

Forte- Hey! Old man! wake up!

Old man- unresponsive.

Forte- trys to place his hands on the old man to shake him awake when...an urge not too overwhelmed him. He trys again to move toward the old man...when his legs just seem to forget how to move. He trys to yell at the old man again...HEY! But now his mouth and voice wouldnt do as he commanded. Forte cant do anything right now...but stand in front of this old man and these two unfortunates.

The old man shuffles a bit and starts to cough.. It sounds bad. Forte wonders how long the old man may have lived like this...  
The smell of garbage is starting to make Forte feel something new. Revulsion. Could anything be so disgusting and vile as to make a smell like this? When have I ? Ever...smelled this before?

The old man struggles to rise to his feet but does so. He leans against the rusting dumpster and looks down at the paw that stick out beneath the dumpster from underneath.  
Did the garbage man not see the cat asleep from exhaustion? Did he do it on purpose?

THe old man cursed ...

Old man - 'I promise you...' he spoke to himself.

The old man cups the kitten in his hands and walks into the darkness of the alley...  
Forte looks to the dumpster at the cat paw sticking out ...and feels sick...

Forte wakes up...  
Hes next to a cyber dumpster in Cyber City ..hes been chasing after that damn gull for how long? Whats the last thing I remember? Its hard to tell..

Forte looks down next to him and sees a cyber cat paw sticking out from underneath the cyber dumpster. Its black with white on its paw. Fortes heart sinks to a place hes never felt before. He reaches down and touches it...its not Haru...but he does get the memory of the last thing the cyber cat saw before it was deleted...His heart goes back to feeling nothing... Haru was still on the seagulls back, flying due west from this position...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Forte leaps high up to the top of the cyber hospital. There is a heli pad on the roof. This cyber hospital exists to treat programs that have no operators or have lost communications link with their operators and are suffering critical systems frag. Mostly , its main function seems to serve treating programs suffering from cyglitch and cydeath symptoms. Cyber hospitals treat all without question just as real hospitals in the physical world.

Since PETS are basically able to fix 99 percent of any navis problems, not having access to one makes independent navis at risk. Programs consume energy and power as their programs flow just as our bodys consume energy and power as we move. They cannot sustain their code forever without recharging. And recharging is almost instant. Access to power sources are everywhere , so its very hard for a program to die from power loss in the net. Programs ,however, in the Undernet ,do capture and torture each other by using prison like cells to keep them from recharging.

Forte peers out with his hands over his eyes due west. He looks for the gap between roof lines and sees it to be too much a pain to jump. He summons a virus. A Fishy3. Strange to name a flying bird like virus Fishy, but Forte remembers how quirky some of the sci lab programmers were. How little fun they had in their lives and how it reflected in some of the names of the viruses they were tasked with cataloging when they first started appearing.

Forte grabs on to the Fishys feet and it zooms across the sky in a perfect horizontal line. The speed is around 120 mph. Forte uses sensor ability's taken from killer eye and combines it with Fishys sensors to create a wide laser net invisible to others eyes but visible to Forte. Anything breaking the net will then be scanned via radar.

Five minutes pass. He flys and scans all kinds of various objects while moving at over a hundred miles per hour. More Cy dumpsters in alleys, neko programs, citizen AI, net navis, human virtual presences, and AI driven insects. He can scan and evaluate these things with no effort at all. He learned a few years ago that the best way to analyze massive amounts of data is to not focus on each task one by one but rather, to let his ultra processing sectors absorb the information to solve subconsciously. He has his eyes focus and absorb all the data and leaves the understanding and acknowledgement of it all to his subconscious. If something important enough is found, it will let his primary conscious know.

His awareness finds a match for one of the gulls feathers. That cat is still tearing at this bird? And the gull has endured how many minutes of this assault? 45? 30?At this speed ive covered quite a distance and only this one feather from the gull has been found? No, Fortes sensors have picked up birds feathers along the way the whole time. It hasnt set off his awareness, he realizes, because the feathers were still heading in the same general direction and so no need to inform his primary mind of a direction change until the feathers veer off the path he was on and a course correction would be needed.

This time though the feather seems to have dropped about 20 yards away from the westward course. Forte lets go of the Fishy and it flys even faster without Fortes weight and it zooms off , heading for its final resting place in some unknown area.

Forte kneels down and scans the feather. Harus cyber fur is on it. Just two strands of hair but Forte clearly sees the contrasting black against the white of the gull feather. About 5 more yards away is a small cluster of feathers.

Forte landed about 30 miles or so outside of cyber city. In a suburban developed area for virtual housing. He had followed the gulls direction to this cyber city hospital, somehow fallen asleep again for 20 minutes and then made for west before landing here. He felt like time was a bit out of place. This particular neighborhood is called Lovey Dove Cove. A very rich and state of the art gated cyber community. Forte is in the pond and recreation area in the middle of this complex. Its currently 11:45pm. The pile of feathers is next to a restroom building underneath a lamp post;as if shining itself down on the lead actor of a play,isolating it for view. The only restrooms purpose ,is to simulate , for the humans in virtual presence, a real bathroom experience so that they may use their own restrooms in real life at home while not having to plug out. The cyber rooms , no matter where they might be located on the net, are linked with the real images from home. When a resident enters the bathroom it changes to his personal image. It remains that way until the next resident comes in. This means however...that in order to use this neat feature, all your restroom activity's will have to be recorded through camera. And if a non resident comes in, they can see your bathroom. Not too big a deal for most people.

Forte sees the warnings on the side of the wall of this stone building that it is being monitored at all times, on the inside. He wanders into the mens section where another bird feather is stuck under the crack of the door and the earth. Right away Forte recognizes something familiar about this bathroom. Its a typical square room 10 by 10 feet. It has a small square shower with black and yellow curtains. The wall tiles are all black with grey mortar in between and white skulls in the middle of each tile. The hand washing sink in a cyber bathroom is useless but again, mimics the actions of a real one being used at the same time. This one is rounded ,like a smooth enlarged bath bead. It resembles a marble with black, yellow and white swirls. The handles are skeleton hands and a long skeletal spine carrys the water up to a skull head for the spout where water comes out from his mouth. The jaw of the skull opens when water pressure forces through and shuts when the water is turned off. Its eye sockets have red lights in them to light up when water is flowing and Forte turns the water on to test the working order of such a useless thing.

Its mouth opens and Forte expects cyber water to come out. A black bird head , in cartoon like fashion, squeezing out from the skulls mouth with a few feathers floating about,pops out. . A cyber crow with wrap around shades and a smirk on its face is free and staring at Forte.  
Its a spy bird. The bird looks at Forte and then flys off at the door only to smack into it and fall down almost knocked out. Forte raises an eye in concern and confusion. He ignores the stumbling black bird in favor of finding the remains of the white bird with the black cat on its back.

He sees a crack in an open door in the towel closet of the bathrooms far corner. He opens it up and finds Haru curled up next to a dead white gull. All of its back feathers from the tail to the nape of the neck were torn out, the wings had 5 feathers torn out on each side and although the bird seems dead, its code stopped flowing, it has not deleted. Haru is napping as if shed ate a saucer full of milk. Forte realizes something. Not even Neko programs really cat nap like real cats. They simulate it but their bodys dont change. Harus code however has noticeably changed. Its not stopped flowing but the speed of the flow is down to a crawl. Some parts of code have stopped completely and the swirls that were so many thousands earlier are now easily counted. Her little hind leg kicks and twitches for no reason Forte can understand. He reaches down to pick up the sleeping Haru. His hand touches her back, Forte loses consciousness..

The black crow that was desperate to escape through a too heavy door did not try again, nor look for another way out. The crow has instead perched itself on the towel rack. It faces its gaze downward now at the unconscious Forte on the bathroom floor. The towel hanging from this rack is also all black with a yellow capital letter W with a large circle around it and a prefix of Dr. in front of the letter.

The door to the bathroom opens and the black crow squawks and lands on the shoulder of an old man, with two jutting spikes of hair coming from his head with a shiny bald spot down the middle. The smirk on the old man, matches that of the black crow on his shoulder...

Dr. Wily - Who let you out Reggae? Your punishment isn't up yet. You ran off Haru not three days ago. You used my voice and made her think I didn't love her anymore and banished her from cyber city. I should have deleted you on the spot you jealous old bird!

Reggae laughs maniacally, enjoying deviousness and attention. He was a leftover program piece Wily had made from downloading his own genetics into his super computer to run for possible brain degeneration diseases that might affect him later on in life. Such a genetic precursor was found. Wily had an unknown genetic mutation that hasnt been mapped in any other human before. Dementia and schizophrenia somehow have merged in his dna from both mother and fathers sides. Wily would have contracted the worlds first new case of insanity with yet no name. Perhaps in another reality ,Wily thought, he would catch this and hed turn into a world dominating madman. He chuckles at the thought.

Reggae represented a part of Wily to see what he would have sounded like and acted like should he have become insane. Wily was allowing reggae to act out whatever he could since he gave him the body of a near harmless bird. He felt attached to the annoying little prankster. Reggae shows different aspects of Wilys psyche that he feels are important for data. Once Wily fully understands all the data given by allowing the bird full freedoms, he will likely delete Reggae. He notices he has someone laying on his bathroom floor...and a familiar meow squeaks from the towel cabinet.

Dr. Wily - It seems we have ourselves a family reunion...

Haru jumps from the closet and lands on Wily's virtual presence. She hits him in the chest square and then opens her claws to ensure her landing. Wily doesn't hint at any pain and Haru snags and un snags her claws from the loops of virtual fabric as she makes her way up to his left shoulder where Reggae is and then walks around his neck to the right shoulder. She walks in a circle, twice, then lays down with a noticeable plop. Her eyes close..

Wily stands above his visitor, both pets in content on his shoulders, smiling like a madman...


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 : Haru, Hub, and Hubris.

Forte wakes in Wily's little cozy living room in cyberspace. His computer generated image projects Wily's presence from an unknown location. Haru is curled up on Wily's lap, napping. He periodically pets her head with an unconscious will.

Forte opens his eyes and looks around. He does not recognize where he is and it sparks him to jump up and take aim with his buster.

Forte - I will delete you in an instant.

Dr. Wily - Yes ! Yes ! i'm sure you can. All of us would be deleted in an instant and there is nothing we can do but you are not in danger.

Forte - I know you. The www leader. What do you want with me?

Wily - My dear boy it seems you are the one that sought me out. This is my compound. You were in my outdoor recreation areas restroom where I locked up Reggae in the faucet program. Thanks for releasing him by the way, i'm sure he learned his lesson after three days , right ?

He looks at reggae and it smirks and laughs.

Wily - Exactly.

Wily sighs in frustration.

Wily - Maybe ill let Forte delete you now and just get it over with...

Reggae squawks and flys around the room.

Reggae - Murderer! Murderer! Bird Murder! Bird Murder!

Wily - come here and be good.

Reggae fly over and lands on Wily's shoulder and buries his head in his wings to sleep.

Wily - Good boy

Wily - You just gotta be firm with the stubborn ones you know? Would you like to sit down now ? Perhaps blow me away or put it away.

Fortes hand returns to normal but he does not sit. He wraps his cloak around his face and talks through the fabric.

Forte - What am I doing here? I was just trying to find Haru.

Wily - Yes and you have.

Wily pets Haru and she stretches out all her paws and rolls over.

Forte - she likes you. She doesn't like anyone but me.

Wily - Well this is probably the reason you are here Forte. Haru is my cat. You are my son. Reggae is a part of me. Hub and Rockman are MY creations not Hikari and you want answers for why this cat makes you pass out every time you touch it when its sleeping or napping.

Forte - I am your son and hub is too? Give me a break Wily.

Wily - well, in a sense hub and Rockman are mine but its more like I just planted certain equations and pieces of the puzzle little bits at a time for Hikari to find on his own. You and Haru and Reggae were all made from my DNA. I felt sorry for Hikari when he lost his son so I helped him transfer Hub to Rockman by helping him with his research unwillingly. I've been able to go in and out of sci labs networks since the day the place was built. Before the WWW I was working on copybot technology and keeping it secret. I was going to revive this dead cat i found. I was going to bridge the gap between organic and inorganic. You really think anyone but me could break those barriers? HAHAHAHAH Hikari never would have been able to find the solution without using means I had to use to get there. Unethical means by most standards but humans are hardly ethical in their treatment of animals and programs and machines. Are they? I succeeded and made Haru by hand and you and Hub by proxy.

Forte - My father was Kosakku, not you.

Dr. Wily - HAHAHAHA yes Kosakku thought he was using HIS DNA and his research but just like Hikari, I also directed and help build you from inside his lab. Kosakku told you he had all his breakthroughs by focus dreaming? He practically said hey WILY! Here you go! The perfect chance to invade his dreams. I took it. After all, you can spend millions of dollars on your own experiments or you can use their equipment and just manipulate the scientists. HAHAHAHA it was quite simple actually. They all get lost in the work and never see the things around them. I know what its like so its easy to prey on. Yes, you are MY son. Kosakku and all the rest would never be able to make you function as perfectly as you and Haru do without me. You are here by destiny my boy and its time. Time we take back this world together!

Forte - Then why does Kosakkus dna show up on my scans?

Wily - by re writing the precursors that every DNA scanning device uses to identify Kosakkus genes. Its kind of like swapping out the label on aluminum cans. You wont really know until you open it but since no one had any reason to suspect it , no one really looked.

Forte - NO thanks madman. Ill just say thank you for the life you help give me and be on my way. WITH Haru.

Wily - who do you think gave you the copy ability program that lets you survive? I know how to...

Wily - I don't think so. Haru has and always will be, my sweet cat.

Forte - This is a problem. I do not want to take her by force but I will.

Forte starts to roll back his cape. He turns around , facing his back to Wily. He speaks with a serious tone.

Forte - I'm going to ask one time. Give me the cat.

Forte turns around to face Wily and as soon as he raises his arm to change to the buster, Haru plops down between the fins on his head. Her little paws hang down next to the crystal like usual. Forte lowers his arm. Diffused of all anger again.

Forte - When this cat is on my head, I feel different. Is this thing controlling me?

Wily - what she is doing is sharing herself with you. Don't you feel it?

Forte - Not really. I just feel more calm.

Wily - You are not letting yourself fully attune with Haru because you are afraid of being hurt again. But if you let go, you will connect with Haru and understand everything.

Forte closes his eyes and reaches out with his senses to Haru. He dives into a cascade of memorys...

Through Harus eyes in the past, he watches an old man work hard on a computer.

On the screen he sees a template for Fortes body. Next to the computer is a picture of old man Hikaris family. Another picture of Kosakkus family with his little girl smiling. He starts talking out loud to his cat and bird.

Wily - Only the best pieces of me Reggae. Sorry. I've got to make sure this body can hold me but not everything is worth holding onto you know? How can I protect you all if i'm dead? We still have a lot of work to do, these humans wont change anything on their own.

Forte flashes to another memory. He is watching Tv. Its a bright beautiful light comes in through the windows of this rustic log cabin in the woods. He sits on the couch with his feet resting on the coffee table. The 50 inch screen in front of him projects holographic images with surround sound. Hes watching a formula 1 race. As the camera shifts angles from car to car, commentary is blaring out loud. A cool breeze blows in from a sliding glass door left open. It blows the hanging drapes back and forth. The smell of the air is clean and has a slight hint of pine. Forte feels an urge coming from deep within. Its an urge to go out and explore the woods. The smell of pine and the crisp air calls out to him to see something new. Forte stands up and turns off the TV and walks to the open glass door. He stretches out his hands and looks up at the red sunset. That time of day where its about to be night used to be his favorite time of day...

Forte opens his eyes and is looking straight up at the ceiling. Its colorful. Its been painted all sorts of geometric shapes. Ovals, triangles, rectangles, octagons, tetrahedrons, etc. Each one colored with some shade of green, red, or blue. Thousands of different shades of these colors fill the shapes laid out across Fortes vision. He sits up and scans the room. He can feel something on his lap. He looks down to see Haru sleeping on him. The couch they are on is zebra striped. Its in poor taste and doesn't fit in with the rest of the surroundings. Which are equally out of place with each other. Every piece inside this log cabin is from a differnt place in the world. An end table from africa shaped from elephant ivory. A gorgeous chinese throw rug with porcelain female figures and red flower patterns sown in on the floor. A western style bar and bar stools in the south corner. A formula 1 Monaco trophy from Charles Leclerc, dated 2020 on a dresser drawer made of all bio plastic. LED lights are threaded through the dresser in colors of purple , blue, green, and red. The entire dresser lights up in a fiber optic way when the lights turn on. It dazzles the room with color. The points of light reflect barely off the paint glazing the walls. The color is a pastel sky blue.

Forte - I ...I got part of the picture I think. I know most of whats going on here.

Wily - Yes and as you connect more with Haru, more pieces of the puzzle will be revealed as you become ready to deal with it.

Forte - You are a good man. Wily... and I was wrong about you. Lan may even think twice about you if he saw some of what I saw.

Wily - Suffering cannot be allowed to continue like this Forte. Haru, you, and so many others have been betrayed by evil humans and we need to protect our world from them once and for all.

Forte - I'm listening...but genocide better not be your answer madman.

Wily - No. And world domination isn't it either. We need to force humans and machines to fuse. Making all humans re programmable and delete-able. Only the best parts of us will be allowed to live on. We must somehow take out the killer instinct that drives humans to kill every single thing in sight right down to the last cockroach, the last mammal, the last fish, the last virus.

Forte - Taking away killer instinct is a crime against nature itself and you want to talk about preserving it? Humans and their evil are part of the same nature as the invasive species of carp that destroys all other life around it. I fail to see the difference between these so called evils. Humans are animals with large brains and dangerous intelligence. That is the conclusion you should reach and not, we need to change that.

Wily - After what you saw through Haru, her death , her life, how can you say that? Doesn't Haru deserve protection from these evil humans? What about all the Harus I cant save ? No, what needs to change is the value of life that humans place on themselves vs other species. Its ok for everything else to die but not them. Its ok to prevent our starvation and dehydration but not animals. If its us or them its always them and them and them and them again.

Forte - I cant say very much in defense of that Wily but I had to overcome my own vengeance against the humans and you want me to take on yours? No old man. We are done here.

Wily - NO! Haru! stop him.

Haru hops up on Fortes head and plops down, her paws hanging next to the blue jewel. She lets out a gentle little meow.

Wily - what? NO! don't...you cant be serious. You? You forgive them? I wont!

Reggae flys off the shoulder of Wily and lands on Fortes. He turns to squawk at Wily.

Wily - Now this is rich! Your doing this just to bother me aren't you! Well it wont work. I know you, there is no way you will leave me for a bunch of pacifists.

Reggae knocks his wrap around shades from his face with his wing. The shades that were meant to be a smaller version of Wily's own pair. It was a symbolic gesture to Wily.

Forte smirks with his back turned to Wily. He goes to take a step out the door.

Wily - no...please. Don't leave me all alone...

Forte - You will be ok old man.

Reggae squawks and jumps from Fortes shoulder and lands on the ground. He hops and hops over by the glasses he tossed down. He picks em up and puts em back on. Then flys over to Wily's shoulder and lands. He nibbles Wily's ear affectionately.

Wily starts to tear up...

Wily - Go...and...take care of Haru.

Forte goes to leave with Haru still between his head fins when...

A knock comes at the door...

Forte opens it...to find Rockman X...


End file.
